Listen to Trent Reznor’s ‘Better Alone’ Playlist

Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor uploaded a Spotify playlist featuring music from across his catalogue, advising fans to listen to it in solitude. Entitled “Better Alone,” the 20-track list can be streamed below.

“Darkness optional but recommended,” he wrote in the playlist’s description, offering tracks from NIN and his movie score collaborations with Atticus Ross. The soothing music included NIN’s “The Persistence of Loss,” “A Warm Place,” “Adrift & At Peace” and others.

Reznor released NIN EP Add Violence last July. It’s the second part of a trilogy of EPs, the first of which was Not the Actual Events, which arrived in December 2016. Announcing the second title, he admitted he didn’t know what the third installment would sound like. “I’ll tell you the blueprint of this suite of records has been starting with the kind of script – the lyrical construct, the world that they sit in,” he told the BBC (via NME). “Really following inspiration in the studio to find out musically kind of feels inspiring at that time. When we did Not the Actual Events, we were really seduced by the violence of it. The kind of throwing Hesitation Marks out the window and being unafraid to explore approaches we have in the past with the kind of, you know, punch-in-the-face feel to it.

“And I think that the length of a five-song EP felt like the right length for that, you know? And to repeat that isn’t as exciting anymore,” he continued. “It’s like we did that. So now as we expand the lyrical viewpoint of this three-song trilogy, the music that was interesting to us this time around kind of surprised us. And Less Than is not entirely representative of where the rest of the EP goes. So this collection of five songs feels like brothers.”

He added: “I have no idea what the last part of this will be. I know lyrically where it goes, but I don’t know what it’s going to sound like yet.”